What’s SHOOT THE MESSENGER?
Well, AICN COMICS: SHOOT THE MESSENGER is your weekly one stop shop for comic book news that’s dropped in the previous week. Thanks to Newsarama, CBR, Wizard, etc. for reporting it as it breaks. Click on the links for the original stories. This column cuts the crap to run down all the vital information for those of you who don’t follow it as it comes in, and serves it all up with that special ingredient of @$$y goodness. It’s also the place for interviews, previews, and special reports.
Hey folks, Ambush Bug here. This week we have a pair of reviews from the San Diego Comic Con by superhero . First up is Part Two of superhero’s sit-down with Catastrophic Comics’ Christopher Folino and THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO William Katt. After that, superhero gives us Part Two of his interview with the creators of the upcoming WONDER WOMAN cartoon. Then I’ll be back with a pair of previews from the Spinner Rack to the Future! Take it away, superhero.
SUPERHERO TALKS WITH CHRISTOPHER FOLINO & WILLIAM KATT PART TWO!
Hey folks, it’s superhero here. OK, out there in comic land: below is my Part To of a Two-Part interview with the heads of Catastrophic Comics, William Katt and Christopher Folino.
You may know Mr. Katt from, among many other things, the ‘80’s hit TV super-hero comedy THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. Mr. Folino is no slouch, however, as he’s the writer and director and producer of the indie film GAMERS.
Together these two have combined to form a comic company known as Catastrophic Comics. Catastrophic Comics has been responsible for the terrifically dark super-hero comic known as SPARKS and will be teaming with Arcana Studios to revitalize THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO in the pages of a six issue mini-series comic soon.
Let’s dive back into the interview.
superhero: How did you end up wanting to create a comic book company? How did you get into comics?
WK: I always loved comics when I was a kid growing up. Every Saturday, some friends and I would race down to the local drugstore. When they used to have newsstands at drugstores. Five and dimes. We’d sit on the floor all Saturday morning and read comic books. I never lost my love of that and I’ve been a storyteller my whole life. Since I was fourteen. I had dinner with my mom last night and she pulls out an old notebook of mine. All these stories that I’d written. Poems and stories and songs…I’ve been writing all my life. I never stopped that. I wrote in college in writing class. I was a music major and an English minor. I always told stories. I’ve written ten screenplays and several plays. A few of them have been lucky enough to get made. Comic books was just another medium. I came up with a story originally for MYTHOLOGY WARS. Which was a book we’ve done. I thought it would make a great animated feature. I talked to Chris about it. He thought that I was wrong. That it sucked. But he said maybe we could turn it into something else. So we talked about a comic book, an outline for a comic book. That’s when we launched off into that. superhero: Do either of you currently read comics?
WK: Oh, yeah, I’m a huge fan of DMZ.CF: It was kind of cool we had Eric Powell who was right next to us (at Comic-Con) from THE GOON. I don’t know how many trades of his I have. Brubaker, I think I’ve read everything by Brubaker. It’s too much money spent on comic books. Too much money spent. It’ll be real fascinating to see THE WATCHMEN.
superhero: Why is your company called Catastrophic Comics? Why go with pamphlets instead of graphic novels?
CF: Catastrophic Comics, it was really funny, because Derek (Derek McCaw, their publicity and marketing guy) and I were having fun with his (William Katt’s) last name and I’ve never seen Bill Katt look so disgusted. We were trying to add his last name to, you know, Catastrophic with a “K” as well as some other things.WK: Catatonic (chuckles).
CF: We just talked, Catastrophic makes sense. Just the normal spelling. Because if we fail at least we put it in our name. We got a wonderful logo designed.
WK: Love our logo design. It’s the atom bomb. We went through four or five different graphic artist to come up with that. We were just knocked out by that.
superhero: So why go with pamphlets as opposed to graphic novels?
CF: The thing with SPARKS that we wanted to do was…it was kind of an interesting move. MYTHOLOGY WARS, Bill really wanted it to be perfect when it comes out. We wanted to have the right artist for it.
WK: It’s been a challenge. CF: A real challenge. So SPARKS, JM Ringuet, who’s doing all of the illustration. It’s amazing. He’s on time, he set the bar for everything. Now it’s a real dark story and we just figured we might as well release that one. It’s going to be a little one but we want to get the credibility of the fact that we’re able to release the book. We’re going to be doing something original and we’re going to be doing good stuff. We’re not going to back down from stuff that’s dark. If we just came out straight with THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO they would be looking at us and saying we’re cashing in. Which is not even the case because we had the plans for MYTHOLOGY WARS to come out first. We’re looking at Sparks and saying, “OK, this is hard business.” You pay for the artwork and you pay for the printing. You look at things…
WK:: There’s very little profit margin, if any.
CF: Yeah, it’s really interesting about Comic-Con, too, because we found at GenCon we had an item which you could sell for twenty bucks and you make your money back like that! But when you have a three dollar an issue book it’s kind of insane because you have to do it for the fanbase. You have to build up the fanbase. You have to. THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO will definitely be another single issue thing. It just has to be. Maybe with MYTHOLOGY WARS, especially since we’re an independent company, we’ll look at that. Maybe building on four issues and making it into a graphic novel. But the whole plan was, what Bill wanted was to get the respect of the whole industry. We’re trying. We’re trying to make sure that everything that we do, THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, SPARKS, MYTHOLOGY WARS, has our stamp of approval.
WK: One of things that I noticed and that was mentioned among a lot of friends of mine at Comic-Con…Comic-Con is, in my estimation, in my humble estimations…I don’t know it’s just my subjective opinion…it’s kind of lost its focus. It’s not about the fans anymore. It’s about a marketing strategy for the studios. I think that the fans are being led down a path that’s not in their best interest. It’s not about the fans anymore at Comic-Con. Now it is a little bit at some of the other places. Dragon Con is a fabulous con. It’s in Atlantic City. For me it’s the best con in the country. Chiller is a great fan convention. There’s a number of them. Comic-Con has changed. We’re not going after the big films and whatnot. We’re just trying to establish some credibility with fans. We’re trying to create a groundswell and know that the fans can come and read our books and know that they’re going to be there every month. That the stories are going to be compelling. That the artwork’s going to be good. superhero: So what is SPARKS?
CF: One last thing we haven’t talked about with THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. We also have the rights for animation. So we’re going to be doing six four minute animated shorts. We’re going to do like lost episodes of season one and season two. We have the original cast doing the voices and go into production in about two weeks. That’s something that we’re hoping to deliver on. You know, because it’s Stephen J. Cannell, it’s Bill’s former boss, so we have to impress him on every single front. Their friendship’s at steak.
WK: It’s kind of a litmus test for Steve too because we want to make sure as he’s making the feature film that there’s still a large fanbase out there that’s going to be receptive to re-launch this. superhero: What is it that you think the comics can offer that a film or TV show can’t?
WK: I think it’s more personal. It’s one on one. You know what it is? It’s creating the mythology, creating the myth. So that it will precede anything that you see later on in film or on television.CF: THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, too, some stuff holds up some stuff doesn’t. Obviously the flying part, the stunts will work better. But the kids (his students), with all due respect, it’s a little freaky. The guys who wrote the original series are looking over it to make sure that everything in the comic book will remain faithful. But the one thing that’s going to be nice is that we’ll be able to go into storylines that are bigger with bigger explosions, too. Honestly, even if you got the rights to do a TV show it’d be a very big production to do.
superhero: Well, let’s talk about SPARKS. What do you have to say to people who haven’t been exposed to it? What is it?
WK: SPARKS is kind of the underbelly. It’s like walking down the dark valley of your life and picking up rocks to see what’s under them.superhero: So what’s it about?
WK: Chris?CF: SPARKS is a superhero noir story.
WK: It’s set in 1938. CF: Bill said it’s CASABLANCA meets LOST because there’s a twist to it. Honestly it’s taking the superhero myth a bit and twisting it a bit. Going up against Batman. Here’s a guy who starts off just like Batman but doesn’t have the success of it at all. At all. Everything goes terribly wrong for this guy. And it just gets worse and worse. What it comes down to is taking an everyday guy who wants to make a difference and just has horrible luck. We don’t find out what his powers are until the sixth book. We want you to get onto the ride. It’s going to be dark. It’s dark. Every book, as it gets deeper and deeper into it…it’s a very hellish world. As dark as Batman’s world is, there are still some lines you just never cross. They do that obviously because they want to keep the franchise going. But the one thing we’ve talked about is we want to tell the story and do the best you can and we’ll finish it. That’s what we’ll do. Because right now in our lives, and we’ve talked about this, and what was really, really important to us is that…if you can do something you truly love and put it all into that then you can have something that you can leave behind that you’re really proud of. With SPARKS it’s an incredible opportunity. Bill’s been really supportive. We basically came up with the idea together with me writing it. It’s been absolutely invigorating. This story, it’s your good old fashioned film noir but it goes a little deeper and a little darker. It’s been fun to discover where you’re going to go with it. It’s your baby.
SPARKS is very personal. It’s a very personal sense of just what can we do to try to write the darkest comic book that we possibly can and try to touch some cord in people’s lives. It’s the opposite of THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO because we had the suit and everything kind of worked itself out. It didn’t happen that way with SPARKS. SOARKS is a lot of tragedy. It’s kind of like that poor TV show, with the family, on FOX, Matthew Fox was on it…superhero: PART OF FIVE?
CF: Yeah. But there’s redemption at the end.WK: Who are we talking about?
superhero: He’s on LOST.
WK: Oh!CF: No, the whole show is…everybody gets cancer…
superhero: It was like LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE of the 90’s. Everyone died, everyone got sick…
CF: But there’s a purpose for everything. That’s the one thing trying to tie everything back together. So you pick up book six and it’s like…hopefully you can evoke that emotion from somebody. JM (JM Ringuet, the artist) brought the world to life. We joke around that you could literally take out the words in the panels and that people would be able to provide their own insight to the story. It’s just…I talk too much…WK: That’s what you should be doing!
superhero: How did you find the artist?
WK: I didn’t really have anything to do with finding JM. That was actually you (Chris). We looked around at a lot of different artists.
CF: We were doing MYTHOLOGY WARS. WK: Yeah, were doing MYTHOLOGY WARS. We started MYTHOLOGY WARS months ahead of this. It was a long time with nothing but complications with different artists.
CF: We basically found him because Derek McCaw had interviewed him because he had done colors on a WARHAMMER comic book. It was funny because we were looking for a colorist on MYTHOLOGY WARS and we got a hold of JM on a message board. He wrote back, “You know I can draw, too.” I looked at his website. There’s a couple of things on his website that were real gritty and dark. You should go check it out. He’s a French guy living in China. It was just like, “Man, you know what? That’ll totally work out.”
WK: He has a really interesting style that I haven’t seen before. When I saw it I said, “Oh, man. That’s cool!” It was unique and it’s hard to find someone that’s unique in this world. Everybody aspires to draw like Top Cow, the artists there, but this is different.
superhero: It is pretty dark. Is that where you would say your tastes lie as far as comics or entertainment in general?
WK: It’s an aspect of it. I’ve said I’m a great fan of DMZ so I like going there. I love the gritty side. I love to see that. What was cool about JM is that his artwork is very expressive…it’s his skew on life. It’s an interpretation of life. It’s not Top Cow, it’s not DC. It’s different. superhero: So that’s where your tastes go?
WK: One of them. I’m an actor. I’ve done some pretty dark pieces as an actor and I’ve written some dark pieces and I’ve done some very fun, fanciful light comedy as an actor. So I’m all over the board. This is where we took Sparks because that’s where the storylines were going. So the form had to follow the function. That was the storyline.CF: And JM has done a great job. He’s got unique colors and it just makes me write darker and darker as we go into it. It’s not just to be dark. It’s just to tell a good story. Really, at the end of the day, can you do a hardboiled detective story? Can you do that? Can you make it make sense? Even with the superhero thing? It’s been a fun challenge. It really has. It’s been an amazing opportunity that you just don’t get again in life. That’s the way I look at it.
WK: You know I always love…one of my favorite rides at Disneyland was Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. This is very much like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. The look of it. It has that kind of off skew everything is kind of melting feel. That’s what this book is.
superhero: So as far as Catastrophic Comics goes, I mean Chris is the writer. There’s another writer working on THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO?
WK: He’s one of the writers. I’m always in on everything.superhero: One of your credits is Executive Producer so you’re the head man?
WK: Just on SPARKS.CF: (Pointing to Mr. Katt.) MYTHOLOGY WARS, main writer. THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, main writer.
superhero: Anything else that you’d like people to know about SPARKS, THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, or MYTHOLOGY WARS before we wrap this up?
CF: We always joke that the main thing that we want to do is just not suck. He (Katt) told us one time he wanted us to be the Pixar of the comic book industry. We’ve got a ways to go to get there but at least we have a direction. We’re going to try to release stuff that has the highest quality.WK: The fans out there are helping us to achieve a large part of what we want to achieve. We couldn’t do it without the fans.
superhero: Well, that’s it.
Hope you enjoyed the read. I know I certainly enjoyed my time with Mr. Folino and Mr. Katt. I can honestly say that these are two of the nicest people I’ve met in comics and I’d like to thank them for their time. I’d also like to thank Derek McCaw for introducing me to Christopher Folino and getting me to the point where I could conduct this interview. Thank you Mr. McCaw.
Before I sign off I do have to send off an extra special thank you to William Katt. At the end of the interview he was nice enough to sign the base of my GREATEST AMERICAN HERO maquette and that made me a very happy camper. Thanks Mr. Katt. You are a prince.
Be sure to get your hands on SPARKS and check out THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO when it debuts in the near future. Add them both to your pull list right away!
Discovered as a babe in an abandoned comic book storage box and bitten by a radioactive comic fan when he was a teenager, superhero is actually not-so mild mannered sometime designer & cartoonist, Kristian Horn of Los Angeles, California. He's been an @$$hole for three years. Some of his work can be seen at www.kristianhorn.com. SUPERHERO ON WONDER WOMAN CARTOON
PART TWO
AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR LAUREN MONTGOMERY
Greetings, superhero here. The following is the second part of a three part interview I was involved in for the Wonder Woman straight to DVD movie that launches in February ’09.
But before I get to the interview I have a couple of thank you’s to throw out there. First, I need to thank Sleazy G. It was Sleazy who tossed me this opportunity and I can’t thank him enough. I didn’t think this would be as fun as it was and I gotta thank Sleaze for getting me into this. It was the highlight of my time at SDCC this year.
Next I have to thank my pal Kevin Murphy. Kevin Murphy is a journalist by trade and when he found out that I was being given this chance he encouraged me to go and do it. Not only that, but the guy actually gave me one of his old tape recorders. To keep. Now if that’s not a good egg I don’t know what is. Be sure to check out Kevin’s website at www.kevmurphy.net. Thanks for the encouragement, Kev. You are the man.
The last, but by far not least, person I must give thanks to is my wife, Amy. Amy did all the hard stuff for this interview in that she sat down and transcribed the whole damn thing. I type about as fast as a retarded chimp with broken knuckles and my beautiful wife stepped up to the plate and did all the hard work. They don’t make women like that anymore and I just want the world to know that if there is a Wonder Woman out there she is my wife.
One more thing. To give credit where credit is due I have to let everyone know that this interview was what is called a round table interview. I was one of four other people asking questions so I have to give them their due here. The other interviewers were: Matt Hazuda from toonzone.net, Janet Hetherington of best-destiny.com, Derek McCaw of fanboyplanet.com, and a gentleman from Wizard Magazine whose name I can’t remember because he never gave me his card. But he was a nice guy and I hope he forgives me for not including his name here.
In any case, here’s the interview. Hope you all enjoy it!
superhero: Did you lobby to get onto the Wonder Woman project?
Lauren Montgomery (LM): Oh, no, no, no. I didn’t like send in my name or anything. I worked with Bruce on Superman: Doomsday and um, you know he was just nice enough to ask me back to do Wonder Woman and I wouldn’t want to have bailed on anything like that.superhero: Did you know a lot about Wonder Woman before you started? Had you read any of the comics?
LM: I can’t say I’m the foremost Wonder Woman expert but I knew enough. Like I knew she was an Amazon. There are a lot of people out there who are like “What? She’s made of clay? What? An island full of women?” you know they just don’t know. I know her origin and I knew some of her villains, but like I don’t know the whole mythos that is Wonder Woman because there’s so much to cover. But I feel like I knew a fair amount to be able to handle her and I’ve learned a lot more about her through the whole process as well.superhero: Did you find any challenges in working with one of the most popular female comic book characters in the world?
LM: The biggest challenge is just hoping you can meet all the fans expectations because there are so many versions of Wonder Woman, you know, and different people all love different versions. No matter what you do you’re going to have a large fan group that are like “I hate it, they didn’t do the Wonder Woman I like!”
So we just try really hard to make her a strong, loveable, appealing character to as many people as we can get to love her. I guess that was the biggest hurdle to get over was making sure we do everything we can to make this a good story to make the fans like her in her first full length animated feature.superhero: What do you think is the biggest thing that the fans will be looking forward to in about this story?
LM: I think what a lot of comic book fans will like is that we didn’t pull any punches as far as, you know, she’s Wonder Woman. I mean she’s out there kicking as much butt if not more than Superman and Batman have done. And honestly of the big three: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman she’s kind of the only one that’s not afraid to kill. I mean she’s an Amazon warrior, she’s been trained to kill. She won’t do it unnecessarily, she’s not going to kill innocent people, but if there’s a bad guy out there and she’s gotta do him in, she’s gonna do it. And you’ll see some of that in this movie. You won’t see her, you know, taking prisoners just because a higher power tells you not to kill this guy. I mean if she’s gotta stomp him, she’s gonna stomp him.superhero: If remember your work on Doomsday you were more sort of like the relationship director in that section and now you get the action, so what were the differences in approach?
LM: Well, there two completely different things. As far as the drama and the relationships are concerned you really want to get into the mindset of the character and see who they are and how they act in certain situations, what are their personal quarks, what makes them who they are. As far as action is concerned, you don’t really have to worry about that too much. You definitely want to be sure their fighting style belongs to them. Like, you don’t want her punching some guy through the head and then like the next guy, she’s like “Oh, I’ll let you live”. You know if she’s taking no prisoners then she’s going to take no prisoners. Action and acting I’d say are just two completely different beats and both are equally difficult to do, both acting and action. So I mean all you can do is just study and you look at the good action and the acting that’s been done before and you try like hell to make everything in your movie good, and that’s what I’ve done.superhero: So are we going to see some of the Wonder Woman basics, the tiara, the lasso, the invisible plane and on the island is she going to be riding a kangaroo?
LM: Well we haven’t put any kangaroos on the island, sorry to say.
But her arsenal is there, she has bullet proof bracelets, she’ll be deflecting bullets. She has her tiara which she makes use of, she uses her lasso as well and she uses her invisible jet. I think the one thing we did without was the spinning in place transformation. I’m sorry for anyone who loves that but we gave her just a slightly more practical transformation. But everything else is there, except the kangaroos.superhero: What is in this film that would draw more female fans? Because it seems that as much of an icon as Wonder Woman is, her book doesn’t sell all that well. Not even close compared to something like Manga which female comic fans are flocking toward. So is there anything in this film that female fans can identify with or will draw female viewers to it?
LM: We do have relationship aspects between her and Steve. We have relationships between her and the rest of the Amazons. A strong female character I guess would be more applicable to the female audience, but of course there is a lot of violence. Which I mean just kinda comes with the territory of being a super hero, but I’m a girl and I like it! I can’t say every girl likes it.
I know there are a fair share out there who are like “oh, there’s blood” and it’s upsetting. So I don’t know if every girl will like it, but I hope they’ll appreciate that we’ve taken her as a strong female character and we’ve created her that way and we’ve given her her own formidable opponents to go up against and prove what she’s worth versus being, you know, just second fiddle to Superman and Batman and just kind of being backup.superhero: Will we be seeing the Diana Prince alter ego in this movie or will it be strictly Wonder Woman?
Her altar ego will make an appearance, but it will be very short. This movie is mostly Wonder Woman. I mean it’s mostly Diana on the island and then Diana as Wonder Woman. I mean we don’t have, we don’t spend a whole lot of time with her getting into shenanigans, like in the U.S. She comes here and does what she’s got to do and that’s the main story that we’ve got. But we’ll see her, she’s there. We just don’t elaborate on it too much.superhero: Gail Simone, who’s currently writing the ongoing Wonder Woman series, spoke in an article how she thinks Wonder Woman is for everybody, not just for women, not just for pre-pubescent boys who are wanting something to look at. As the director of this film, how do you feel about that? Do you think Wonder Woman is for everybody and if so how does this movie reflect that?
LM: I think she can be for everyone. But then again, not everything is for everyone. I mean, no matter what there’s going to be people out there who just don’t even care about super heroes. But she’s a strong female character. I mean she’s strong, so that can apply to everyone. She’s female which, I guess that applies to everyone. I don’t know if it only applies to boys – pre-pubescent boys, but I would hope not. We haven’t treated her specifically in that way - as a pinup. And we haven’t treated her specifically as a feminist either. We’ve treated her as a real character which I think anyone can really grasp onto and I hope this movie would apply to a lot of people. But you just never know. We’ll have to just wait and see.superhero: You said Diana Prince shows up near the end and so this is clearly an origin story. One thing we haven’t seen out of the DC direct movies is…are you setting these up as a franchise, you know Wonder Woman II?
LM: As far as I’m concerned, I have absolutely no control over what they do next. So I guess that’s more of a question for Warner Bros. or Bruce. They’re the ones coming up with the story lines and what’s going to happen next. I think just as far as Superman, we’ve already seen his origin story. Batman as well and they both had series. Wonder Woman never had her own series, so we’re kind of just starting her off here. She had Justice League in which she had a starring role, but of course she wasn’t the star.
Nobody in that series was the star, so this is her first time being front and center, so we might as well start it off right and show this is where she came from, this is who she is. And that’s really the only influence we had as far as making an origin story. I don’t know if they’ll spin off into more Wonder Woman movies. I can assume maybe, if it does well. They’d probably like to keep the main three recurring in videos. I doubt we’ve seen the last Batman animated movie, so I mean why not? Why not another Wonder Woman down the line?superhero: Is it set in modern times, even though the original was in the 40’s, are we looking at Wonder Woman coming into modern day and a modern environment?
LM: Yeah, we set this one more in contemporary times. So she’s not coming into World War II and the Nazis, she’s coming in the U.S. with more modern weapons and more modern everything. I guess it’s just like a new, fresh version of Wonder Woman so that even young kids can get into it - cause they might be like “I don’t know what a Nazi is, I don’t know about all this.” and they might be a little concerned. This way we kind of hoped everyone will be able to enjoy it, and we hope we don’t’ make any of the hard core fans angry that it’s not exact. But it’s definitely inspired from the comic and I think our origin story really remains true to who she is.
superhero: What sort of animation were you into growing up, or what got you into animation and what might of influenced you whether it be films or books?
LM: Growing up I watched a copious amount of Disney movies. That’s what I loved including Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid and all those girlie moves. I didn’t really like watching action until the Batman Animated series came out and that was I think my first view of action and I loved it and watched it every day. And so I say both of those had a very strong influence on my directing style now. I watched a fair amount of anime as well which has a lot of really good action in it, which is helpful when you’re doing the big superhero battles. So, um, I didn’t read a whole lot of comics, but I knew the main characters and I knew Superman, Wonder Woman and who they were and I’ve learned a lot more about them just working with super heroes so often. But I think Disney movies, Batman – you know all the superhero cartoons as well as other anime. Those are probably the biggest influences I’ve had as far as my storytelling.superhero: Any particular anime?
LM: COWBOY BEBOP I love and I watch all the time. And I just adore the directing style they use, so I try to draw a lot from that when I’m directing.superhero: Will we be seeing Diana in the role of emissary to the world of man from Themyscira, like as the person showing the way of peace to man? Or will we be seeing a Wonder Woman who has perhaps been banished from the island and picks up the mantle?
LM: We’re not going to get that far into it yet. What we’ll see is Wonder Woman coming off the island in the role of emissary. She’s going to come off the island specifically with her mission in mind. She’ll leave to accomplish a certain mission and after that when she decides to stay it’s as an emissary, she’s an Ambassador so we’re not going to banish her in this movie. I think we opted more for a happy ending than a bad one.superhero: Will we be seeing any of her earth based rogues, perhaps?
LM: We may have a little cameo in there here and there. Her main focus will be her one villain, which we’ve already released is Ares and outside of that you know, a little cameo might be in store in the end.
superhero: What has been your favorite moment working on this project?
LM: I think my favorite part was probably watching the animatic because it was all assembled and we had the voices and we saw the first glimpse of what it was going to be. I mean the most amazing voice acting really adds so much to all of it. I mean the most beautiful drawings in the world can’t do anything if your acting is just horrible. So I guess just seeing it in its raw form, not yet animated, but everything’s there, the drawings are there, the voices are there. I mean it was just so nice to see what all the hard work had finally accomplished.superhero: I heard you say…if you had your say you’d do Black Canary. What would be your take on Black Canary?
LM: Oh, I have no idea. I totally have to look more into it. I’m just interested in bringing more female characters to the forefront because there’s just so few of them. Um, and so you know, I’m not even 100% sure what Black Canary’s origin story is. I just know she was cool and I like her.
superhero: Do you like to see a Birds of Prey done perhaps?
LM: I wouldn’t mind it, if it was done right. I mean I wasn’t too fond of the show and I didn’t watch it a whole lot, but I mean as long as the characters were well done and they did it right, I wouldn’t mind seeing it, it would be kinda cool just seeing a girl team.superhero: Thanks Lauren. Well, that’s it for this week. Be sure to come back for Part Three of this interview in an upcoming Shoot the Messenger Column!
Looks like we have time for a quick spin or two on the old Spinner Rack to the Future. Let’s take a look at what’s coming from Top Cow this week. DRAGON PRINCE #1 is from writer Ron Marz and artist Lee Moder. It looks to be a fun one. Check out this five page preview. We even threw in a few variant covers for your clicking pleasure.
That preview was fire-vomiting good! And the art my Moder is tops. DRAGON PRINCE #1 will be belching flames in your face on Wednesday. Be sure to pick one up.
Next we have 100 BULLETS #95. As this seires winds down to its conclusion, the intensity and the stakes appears to be amped up to a fever pitch. Take a look at this five page preview of 100 BULLETS #95.
Can’t wait to see how Brian Azzarello ends this phenomenal series. Look for 100 BULLETS #95 on Wednesday.
What comic out on the shelves right now doesn’t get enough coverage but deserves it?
